Tainted

I ain’t gonna lie, this is hard to take.

  

Call my Pollyanna, call me crazy, hand me a Breathalyzer because you think I’m drunk on the Belichick Kool-Aid but I did not see this coming.

A few thoughts…

I still don’t understand – based on what I’ve heard of the process used by the NFL to certify game balls – how the Patriots could’ve intentionally deflated the footballs. Not that I think this matters. Whether the league has any evidence of wrong-doing on the part of any member of the New England Patriots, the public perception will be that they – or more specifically Belichick – cheated. Guilty! Again.

Did the NFL collect the Colts’ game balls as well? Wouldn’t it be important to know how the environmental factors (temperature, humidity, the number of times LeGarrette Blount fell on the football) might’ve impacted the integrity of the football? Were all the Colts’ game balls inflated to the league guidelines (12.5-13.5 PSI) by the end of the game? 2 PSI does seem like a lot but it’s a number without context – for the moment, at least. I’m expecting more than a few experiments with inflating, cooling and spiking footballs to see how that impacts PSI. I expect some of those experiments to exonerate and others to condemn the Patriots.

According to reports, 11 of the 12 game balls were underinflated. If Belichick is as good at cheating as everyone seems to believe he is, how did he miss that 12^th ball?

Having re-watched the game, I can’t really see how the Patriots gained any advantage, given the number of drops by New England’s usually reliable receiving corps. And what about that wobbly duck Brady underthrew to a wide open Julian Edelman (who did stop and make the catch)? If anything, it seemed like the Patriots had more issues with ball control in the Colts game than I’m used to seeing. A subjective call at best. Nobody seems to be questioning the outcome of the game in any case.

Is this a league-wide issue? We have anecdotal evidence that teams have preferences for inflating the football at the low end or the high end of the acceptable range, working the margins whenever they can. Of course, Mike McCarthy proved he wasn’t smart enough to think of something like this last Sunday and Aaron Rodgers is a lovable scamp. Bill Belichick is a pigskin sociopath and Tom Brady swears too much.

In next year’s game with Indianapolis, expect Bill Belichick at some point to ask the refs to check the inflation of the Colts’ game balls.

The consensus among the gridiron cognoscenti seems to be (a) this had absolutely no impact on the outcome of the AFC Championship and (b) this is really a huge big deal. I’m having a hard time reconciling those two points of view. Considering that violating the rule comes with a $25,000 fine (with options for discretionary punishment), it seems like the league considers it more of a venal than a mortal sin. $25,000 would be a lot of money for you or me, but for an NFL franchise, that’s just driving around drunk money.

A Patriots’ win in the Super Bowl – hardly a foregone conclusion – will be tainted by this controversy, regardless of what happens next. I thought this was likely going to be a close game and New England would be lucky if they were on the right side of a 27-26 score. At this point, a one-point win will only have the pigskin pundits and bobbleheads wondering what underhanded trick the Patriots pulled to give themselves that one-point advantage. In the game itself, every wobbly throw, every dropped pass, every fumble by a Patriots’ player will be served up as proof that New England has been underinflating footballs for years. See! They can’t play the game with a legal football!

The Patriots could play a perfect game and win the Super Bowl by a score of 55-3 and I’m not sure it would matter.

It is what it is.